March Begins… late

I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since I last updated here. My apologies to anyone reading. 

I’ve still been struggling to find my stride this year. Seems like every fresh week starts so promising and then collapses horribly somewhere in the middle–when I’m too lazy to go running, too distracted to do any artwork, and too brain-numb to write anything.

I realized that over the last several weeks I’ve been extremely absorbed by Etsy. I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my shop, but more time than necessary clicking the refresh button on my stats page. So I decided to take a break from Etsy this week. I’ve checked in every day to see if I had any sales, but other than that, I’ve been trying to focus more on writing.
   I’ve been struggling with writing lately. This year was supposed to be full of writing, but I’ve barely put in a single word since November. Finally on Monday I sat down and just started typing. I’ve come up with a new story idea. I have no idea where it’s going, but I’ve been working on it every day and it’s fun and exciting :)  

In other news–we’re moving! Turns out things are going to work out for that house we really wanted. We came to an agreement with the sellers, got the loan, and we’re set to move in the second week of April! It’s all very exciting and confusing, and I can’t wait to get settled in the new place. I think part of my problem lately has been that I feel so unsettled, knowing that we are going to be moving soon. I’m also nervous and a little sad at leaving mine and Phil’s first real home, but mostly I’m just ready for mid April to come and go so things can go back to normal.

On this note, I leave. I have a painting to do for my aunt and I set aside this morning to work on it. I will leave you with this photo though.Image
This is a wild possum that visited our yard a few nights ago. Despite having had Maypop for almost a year now, there is still something special about seeing an opossum. He was about twice Maypop’s size and there was something so very wild about him. It was a very cool experience and I’m very glad he let me take photos of him :)  
 

Getting Better All the Time

It suddenly occurred to me that I haven’t blogged in almost a week :(  My apologies to my small–or rater non-existent readership. So much for those February resolutions.
I feel bad about not meeting all the weekly goals I’ve set for myself, but I keep telling myself I’m just a work in progress and make an effort everyday to do better.

Plus, I’ve been very busy lately! I’ve gotten seven orders in the last ten days! I’m extremely excited about this. :D I’m hoping this is the big break for PossumTree I’ve been waiting for :) We could really use the money now more than ever!

We went and looked at the house we want again today and took our older siblings (my older sister married my husband’s older brother)  with us to get their stamp of approval on the house. They seemed to really like it too. So… we’ll be working out the logistics of that over the next few days and, who knows? Maybe be next week, we’ll be in the process of buying the house and I’ll be halting much of my creating to work on packing! I know it sounds like a miserable job, but I’m actually really looking forward to it! :)

So that’s what’s happening in the life of PossumTree. Here’s a silly photo of Maypop, because it makes me giggle when I look at it.

The Truth About January

2012 has gotten off to a rocky start. I can’t say I’ve been miserable for the last month, but I have stopped a few times (especially over the last week) and realized that I’ve been in a bad mood and for no apparent reason.

I think the reason is that I’ve just been feeling very unsettled. We’re supposed to move in the near future and I can’t feel settled in our old place when I know we’re going to get a new place soon. I’m tired of the cramped living quarters, the horrible carpet (because you cannot have ANY pets when there is carpet involved if you want the carpet to live to tell the tale) the crazy disorganization due to lack of space. I’m ready for room to breath. But more importantly, I’m ready to be settled again.
Also I think lack of exercise has a huge negative impact on my life (hence the lousy mood). It probably has a negative effect on everyone’s life but those who don’t exercise and have never really been into exercising probably don’t realize that.
And of course, the general lack of balance in my life. I’ve been all crafty and no writey this month and while I love crafting, I really miss writing. I wrote two 50,000 word novels in November and while I long to edit and rewrite them, I haven’t given myself time to. Plus, I was supposed to write a 5,000 word story for my writing group this month and I’m only just getting around to it (in the last two days of the month. It’s due on the first). It’s ridiculous and I must change that.

So. Goals for February:

Exercise 5 days a week.
Swim once a week.
Write everyday.
Read 4 books.
MOVE HOUSE.

There might be more, but I can’t think of them at the moment. I’ll have them set up by tomorrow and Wednesday I’ll be good to go!

I like having little goals. Even if I fail at them sometimes. I just set them up for the next month and try again.

P.S.
Bright side: I got a message on Etsy this morning from someone who featured me in their blog! It’s my first feature ever and it looks like a pretty cool blog too! Check it out! :)  handmadenest.blogspot.com/2012/01/wildest.html

Saturday Morning Post

I’m only just beginning to realize that if I stay up until midnight, I’m not going to be functioning properly at 6am. Especially after an entire week of trying to do so. And when each short  night it punctuated every half an hour of a possum running over your face.

I don’t know what her problem is. She goes through these phases where at night she just goes crazy. I mean, I think normally she just runs around the house like a mad thing, but in these phases she decides she wants me and Phil to be awake too. So she insists on trying to keep us awake all night. Closing the door doesn’t work because then she just tries to chew her way through. She can’t, of course, but her gnawing on the door makes a horribly loud grinding noise that keeps us awake anyway.
So, I’m pretty tired at the moment. But, I wanted to show you my new project!

So, my grandfather was a National Geographic fiend. He probably had every single magazine from about 1950 (possibly even earlier) until he died in 2007. Me and my husband lived in his house after a we got married and found a sizable stack of maps from the National Geographic hidden away in one of the closets. I’ve been keeping them all this time, not really sure what to do with them and I started seeing some people using maps as bases on which to put their art. So I decided to try it out :) I had a lot of fun making these and I will definitely be doing more.
Obviously, this is my China series. The map I used is a map of China from the year 1980. I’ve used up most of the good bits of that map, so now I just need to decide what country to do next!

You can view these on Etsy here, in my Cartography Art section :) http://www.etsy.com/shop/PossumTree?section_id=11052386

Hope you enjoy!

Half Day

So, I’m supposed to be giving myself every Friday off, but yesterday I had a great idea for a new line of items for my shop and I really want to work on them. So I’m doing a half day instead. It’s the end of the month so Phil will be working from 8am to 7pm (boo!) so my plan is to work until about 1 when we have lunch, then from 2 to 7 go hang out at B&N like I did last week.
I really need to work on my short story for this month. It’s supposed to be done by next Wednesday. The challenge is 5,000 words and I think I’ve got about 1,500 done. If I apply myself, I could finish it in one focused evening. I think I’ll do that on Monday night while Phil’s at work…
I just haven’t been in a very writing mood lately, which is sad. I guess I’ve been so focused on the shop and trying to get it going that I haven’t left any creativity to writing. I keep thinking about my stories though–the big ones I want to finish and wishing I could set aside time to work on them. I just need to manage my time a little better, I guess.
I have been reading a lot more though, which has been nice. The problem is, I’m reading something that I actually like. It’s ironic, but I think I’m actually more inspired to write when I’m reading something I hate. I guess I just get this unbearable urge to write something better. And it’s always good to know how not to do something :P

Anyway, I should get going. I’m going to tidy up the house some. In the last week, Maypop has decided that when I give her something she doesn’t want to eat, the best course of action is to tear it up into little pieces and scatter it around the house. So that where ever you walk, you always step on a damp cold bit of mushroom or apple, and you’re constantly peeling little bits of spinach off your socks. Sigh.

Hope everyone is having a good Friday :)

Maypop’s Tale

Once upon a time, there was a little opossum named Maypop.

One day, when Maypop was very small, an evil dark cat named Lyra grabbed her and brought her into a human stranger’s house.  The girl who lived in the house was shocked and surprised at the sight of what appeared to be a small rat in her cat’s mouth, and even more shocked and surprised when she realized it was not a rat, but a possum!

Lyra ran into a bedroom, dropped Maypop on the floor, then ran away, apparently terrified of her catch. Maypop was so frightened that she played dead.

The girl who lived in the house–whose name was Mandy– could tell the baby opossum was still alive, so she picked it up, and began trying to clean its wounds. She was very worried the possum might not live because of  the horrible gashes and scratches on her chest and left arm from the cat attack. However, very soon the bleeding stopped and it seemed that Maypop was going to be okay.

Mandy researched online to learn more about opossums and specifically young ones. According to what she read on many websites, Maypop was too small to return to the wild and with her injuries, Mandy knew it would be too risky to hope that Maypop could make it on her own. She tried contacting a few local wildlife rehabilitators in her area through phone and email, but nobody would answer. So Maypop stayed with Mandy and her husband, Phil, who were both quite happy to care for the little injured opossum.


Maypop loved to sleep inside Mandy’s pocket

And hang out in her hair

But her favorite place was in the hood of Mandy’s sweaters. Mandy carried Maypop everywhere, as the little possum slept, curled up in her hood.

When Maypop got a little older, Mandy started taking her outside to play. Maypop was quite nervous of the outdoors at first and as soon as Mandy would set her down on the ground, she would scramble onto Mandy’s trouser legs and climb her clothes all the way back to the safety of her shoulder.



But after some time of watching Mandy forage in the dirt for worms, snails, slugs, and insects for Maypop to eat, she began exploring on her own a little more.



The cats who lived in Mandy and Phil’s house weren’t exactly thrilled that a possum had come to live there, but they didn’t bother Maypop too much. In fact, they very kindly often left dead animals such as birds, lizards, frogs, snakes, and shrews on the driveway for Mandy to give Maypop to eat.

After a month or so, Mandy wondered if Maypop would want to leave them to go live in the wild, but Maypop seemed very content to stay with her adopted family. One day, while Mandy was following Maypop around the yard, the little possum got frightened by a loud noise and took off into the thick trees and shrubs that ran along the back of the house. Mandy searched for fifteen minutes, climbing through the dense foliage that was all thorny vines and spider webs. At last she made it to the other side of the trees, but Maypop was nowhere to be seen. She used her cell phone to call Phil at home and ask him to come help, but as soon as he opened the back door, there was Maypop, waiting to be let inside!

A few months passed and Mandy soon came in contact with some Floridian wildlife rehabilitators on Facebook. When Mandy asked what she should do about Maypop, they told her that possum would be too familiar with humans, dogs, and cats to be let back out on her own, and it would probably be best if she stayed in Mandy and Phil’s care.

It has been nine months since Maypop came to live with Mandy and Phil and she is now too big to sleep in Mandy’s pocket or hood.

Now that she’s older, she has kind of outgrown the small backyard, so Mandy takes her out to the park every evening  for a walk. Maypop loves clambering over roots and stumps, rubbing against trees and fallen leaves, and scurrying through the muddy ditch the runs along the outside of the park.

After her evening walk, Maypop loves to run around the house, climbing on the furniture, up the curtains, and waging a constant battle against humans and cats alike, as she tries to go into the laundry room to eat cat food.

Sadly, opossums do not have very long lives. In captivity, their lifespan is greater than it is in the wild, but it’s still too short for those few who fall in love with these amazing creatures. Mandy and Phil will love and cherish Maypop every day of her life.

The Goodness That is Friday

I took Friday and Saturday off from work.

And I mean, I actually didn’t do any work.

Normally when I have “lazy day”, or a “day off” I still end up doing work without realizing it. Sitting down and sewing and painting are things I really love to do and they don’t feel like real work. But over the last ten days or so, I’ve really been pulling out all the stops and working really hard on getting my shop up to par. In the last ten days (including my two days off) I’ve put up ten new listings, I’ve gone through and tweaked my titles, tags, prices, both shipping and non. I’ve worked on photos, done a lot of research on how to be a successful shop, scoured the forums for information and ideas. It’s been good, but when I put in 10-12 hours of this stuff, plus taking care of the house, and animals and husband, going to bed after midnight and getting up at 6am the next morning, it really started to take a toll on me. So on Thursday night, as I crawled into bed at about 12:30, I vowed to take the next day off. Phil told me I should have a three day weekend, because he’d had one last week and I’d worked through the whole thing.
I had done the bulk of my weekly cleaning the day before and I had made a delicious (and therefore, rather unhealthy) cottage pie (with a pastry crust–it was SOO good, if I may say so myself) so we had the left overs for lunch and then I went to B&N where I spent about four hours just sitting and reading. Even though I took my laptop, I didn’t open it a single time. I had a nice hot mocha and just sat and read. It was lovely and possibly the nicest day off I’ve had in a very long time.
At 5pm, I came home, checked on the animals, changed my clothes, and went to pick Phil up from work. He’d gotten a gift card to a restaurant from his team some weeks before, so we used it to have a nice meal out. All in all, a very good day. And I think I will give myself at least one day a week like this,  because everyone needs a nice day off, even if you do work at home. I’m making my weekly day off Fridays :)
I ended up not working Saturday as well. We went and hung out with my husband’s brother for the afternoon. We worked on our Warhammer models and talked to the parents-in-law in England on Skype and played Dominion with them. All these things are nice, but I find it hard to feel like I’ve had a proper “day off” when I have to interact with people I know. It’s nothing personal, it just feels like work to me :P

Today, it’s back to the grindstone for me, but Phil had a horrible night. His asthma was acting out something horrible and he didn’t get to sleep until around 3. So he’s home with me for the day. I feel bad that he’s unwell, but I always like it when he stays home from work :)

Here are the two listings I put up yesterday. I’m really impressed by the amount of attention they’ve already got! I guess I listed them at just the right time!

    

You can view the Henry the Arctic Hare here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/91178650/white-rabbit-plush-miniature-felt-rabbit

And Bianca the Kitten here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/91213508/white-kitten-miniature-white-cat-plush?ref=v1_other_1

The photos of Bianca really didn’t turn out well at all, and I probably should have put off listing her until I took better ones. Oopsh. I’ll get better ones today :)

The Hunt Continues…

So, if you’ve been reading, you know that my husband and I are trying to move out of our tiny little 800 square foot duplex and into a real house. Well…this is the one we want!  

We went to go see it about a week ago and it is absolutely lovely. Okay, not a 3,000 square foot mansion with eight en suite bedrooms, and 30 acres  of half wooded land, and three duck ponds, but it really is the closest thing we’ve seen to what we’re looking for. Brick house, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, 1.69 acres for the animals to room around–which includes a large wooded area–tons of storage both inside and outside. It’s really awesome. Closer to the road than I would like, but I guess you can’t have everything.
The only real problem is the price. We’ve talked to someone at the bank and technically, the house is within our reach. But it does mean a monthly payment of almost double what we are paying now. I know we could do it–we’ve scrimped and pinched before–but I’m very wary of biting off more than we can chew.
Everyone at my husband’s work really likes him and his bosses keep hinting that he’ll be up for another promotion in about six months (which will mean a lot more money). Plus, I’m working really, really hard to get my Etsy shop up to scratch and to start making some money off of it. If those things happen, we’ll be fine. But there are no guarantees and we can’t make big decisions based on what should happen or what could happen…
So, we’re still thinking about it. Apparently we’re the only ones who have really shown a lot of interest in the house during the three months it has been on the market, so maybe they’ll come down on the price some for us…

Anyway, I want to show you the Valentine’s Day stuff I have for my shop!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/90780156/valentine-sock-monkey-sock-monkey-plush

http://www.etsy.com/listing/90141841/valentines-day-bear-tiny-felted-polar

Those are the only two I have so far, but I’ve got another monkey almost completed, and then I’m probably going to do some Valentine Possums :)

Hope everyone is having a good Wednesday!

Up, Up, and Away…

Lately, I’ve been lurking a lot on the Etsy forums.

Somehow, I missed that aspect of Etsy over the last few months. I once stumbled on there to ask a technical question and after receiving several kind and informative answers, I thanked them and never returned.

But now I’m realizing that participating in business related discussions seems to be doing wonders for my views! That’s not the only reason I’m looking. In fact, I read a lot more than I comment on things. It’s very interesting to read all the different insights into this strange and new (to me) thing that is online shopping/selling. I’m a little embarrassed at just how much of my time has been eaten by scouring the forums. Although my husband tells me it’s all good for me, it’s hard for me to see it as not just time-wasting and procrastinating :P
I’m a little concerned about my goals this year. The truth is, I’ve so far been terrible at keeping my “resolutions”. But I think the real culprit is not having a real routine.
I thrive on routine and not having one is really throwing me for a loop. Not being able to run is the worst part. But since I’ve given up even walking and cycling due to my knee, it means I have no real reason to get up in the morning at all. My husband gets up and walks the dog on his own, while I sit around in my pajamas feeling a little pathetic. I really miss the morning walk. It’s been apart of my routine ever since we got Rowan (the dog) three years ago. And while I have my little fifteen minute upper-body strengthening routine, it just isn’t nearly as satisfying as running and to be honest, feels like a bit of a waste of time :( I know it’s not and I just need to get that out of my head, but that’s my feeling at the moment.

Sigh. It’s the end of week two in 2012. I really need to get my act together. I think I will. And I really think things will pick up after my knee heals and I can start running again. At the moment, I just feel useless and it’s not helping my overall mood on life.

However, like I said, the view in my shop are higher than ever! 76 today! I know that seems very poor to some of the really successful people, but to me it’s very exciting! Now if only I could turn those views into sales… maybe then I wouldn’t feel quite so useless. :)

On that note, I leave today’s creation:
Image
He’s a real cutie in my opinion! :D I just really hope others do too. You can view him proper here, if you like: http://www.etsy.com/listing/90531509/snow-leopard-cub-felt-snow-leopard

Good night all. Tomorrow, I’m going to try to relax and not work. Husband is trying to make me take weekends off, which I guess isn’t a bad thing. Going to try a new routine on Monday!